An opinion piece, written by Tzeporah Berman, appeared in the Globe and Mail on August 9, 2024. In this op-ed, Tzeporah explains how only reducing emissions, but not fossil fuel extraction or processing, isn’t having the beneficial effect on the environment or global temperatures that we imagined. We encourage you to read it at the link provided, however, be mindful that it is behind a paywall and you may be prompted to subscribe to the Globe and Mail to read it. (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-our-strategy-of-reducing-emissions-but-not-fossil-fuel-production-isnt/)
Tzeporah Berman is the co-founder of environmental nonprofit Stand.earth and the chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.
BACKGROUND FOR G78 ANNUAL POLICY CONFERENCE 2024
“Canada cannot end this crisis alone: international collective action to resolve the global climate emergency”
VERSION: September 2, 2024
Purpose: States-parties have not met their commitments to the Paris Agreement, and these commitments were inadequate to deal with the magnitude of the problem. Accordingly, in its 2024 annual policy conference, the Group of 78 will address the scope for civil society to catalyze action.
Background: Canada is a very significant contributor to global warming. It is the world’s seventh-largest source of Greenhouse Gas emissions. Moreover, its per capita emissions are among the highest in the world. And if the emissions caused by the combustion of Canadian oil and gas exported to other countries were included, Canada’s contribution to global warming is much higher.
In absolute terms, Canada accounts for less than 2 percent of the world’s total. Compared to the largest GHG emitters such as China, the USA, India, the EU and the Russian Federation, it is a far smaller contributor. If Canada eliminated all its GHG emissions while other countries continued to pollute at their current levels, the world would remain a long way from the current goal of reducing net carbon emissions to zero. The climate emergency would become a catastrophe, ending much life as we know it on this planet.
In confronting the climate emergency, all countries, including the largest emitters, are faced by a collective action problem. Each country is not inclined on its own to make the necessary sacrifices, even more so when vested interests (e.g. fossil fuel producers) have political power to resist action. Each country can react to this conundrum either by doing little to reduce its emissions: this is the path of doom, to planetary disaster. Or it can commit not only to doing its fare share of emissions reduction, but also work with other countries to do likewise: the path to planetary survival.
The 2015 Paris Agreement was an important attempt to solve the collective action problem. It required signatory countries to articulate Nationally Determined Contributions—non-binding climate-related targets for GHG emission reductions. While there was virtually universal buy-in for the Paris Agreement, it had two fatal problems: many of the targets were not sufficiently high to reduce emissions enough to arrest global warming; and the targets were themselves non-binding. It is thus not surprising that global warming has continued to rise and is poised to cross the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels in the next five years. We need to go beyond the Paris Agreement to solve the climate emergency, to develop a regime with more consequential targets that are binding.
In Canada, the debate on climate policy has been very Canada-centric. We behave as though if Canada were to adopt more ambitious and enforced climate targets, electrify everything, and phase out fossil fuel production and consumption, this will save Canadians from climate disaster. Alas, it will not. The outcome is not entirely in our hands. It depends considerably on what other countries do, particularly the big emitters.
The G78 conference will focus on how to resolve the collective action problem posed by the climate emergency that the Paris Agreement has failed to resolve. It builds on the G78’s mandate to seek peaceful, equitable, and climatically sustainable solutions to current problems in international and foreign policy. It will explore more aggressive actions to combat climate change through inter-governmental organizations, including the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements, and stronger cooperation among national governments and subnational governments (including municipalities). Perhaps most important, it will explore the bridge-building role that can be played internationally by civil society organizations.
A particular focus of the conference will be on current initiatives to develop and implement a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT). These build on lessons from the arena of nuclear disarmament, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Like the FFNPT, the nuclear disarmament treaties aim at eliminating an existential threat to humanity, are global in scope, and demand collective action if they are to succeed.
The conference will address overarching questions such as:
- What are the key lessons of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)? How should these be considered in the design of the FFNPT?
- What are the key successes and failures of the Montreal Protocol, the Paris Agreement, and Biodiversity Protocols? What lessons do these offer for the design and implementation of a FFNPT and other global actions to combat the climate crisis?
- What are some examples of the role played by civil society in collective action?
- What are the key essential collective actions that must be taken by states/governments to eliminate the climate crisis?